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I woke up yesterday to find that my male convict has breed with my female Spilirum, and both were guarding some newly hatched fry.

Has anyone else encountered this, and does anyone have any ideas as to raising the fry?????

let the parents raise the fry... but do provide supplemented crushed flakes as a food source.

i think it'll be neat to raise these fry to adulthood and see how they'll turn out to look like. i know a lot of people will give you critism for allowing different fish species to hybridize but it's really up to you if you want to raise the fry or not. personally, i would

I didn't intend for them to breed, as I originally bought the Spilirum as a male (or so the guy at the shop told me), but I'm not going to kill them because someone finds it unnatural, as they paired up themself and seem to be showing normal parental care. I spoke to a guy at my lfs and he said he would be interested in them when they were a saleable size to trade. Thanks for the support.

if you're going to give/trade them to the lfs to turnaround and sell please make sure they sell them off as ConvictxSpilurum. So many times an lfs will take hybrids such as you have and turn around and try to sell them as a pure species. This is exactly why you can't go to just any lfs and get a pure red devil, midas, green terror, synspilum, trimac etc. Personally I wouldn't sell them at all. You never know what will happen when someone else buys them. There's nothing wrong, imo, with raising hybrid fry but re-selling them can be detrimental to the hobby.

anyway, as for what to do well you don't have to do anything for about 4 weeks or so. In a month I would remove the fry because the parents could well be ready to spawn again and may wind up eating the fry.

as for what they'll look like, some will look more like a convict, some will look more like spilurum and a few will have characteristics of both. these 2 species are very closely related so it's no surprise that they spawned together. shoot, convicts will spawn with anything.

I've seen at my lfs previously red devils X black belts, and they clearly labelled them as such, so they atleast do the right thing by buyers. There more interested in them for there own tanks and for select regular customers. I tend to believe them in this case as I always get an update of stock that comes in that doesen't hit the display tanks. Thanks for the info.